Infrastructure: Tar Paper Paintings
I use materials as metaphor to conceptually focus on the effects of environmental pollutants on body and society.
In this work, tar paper and house paint serve as medium and metaphor: these tar paper paintings document the power lines and water towers that loom over us, seen or unseen infrastructures that are necessary, and yet frequently harmful or toxic.
My aesthetic draws on memories of the Gulf Coast of Texas where industrial and post-industrial infrastructures alter the landscape in dramatic ways, and where historical and economic lines of power can be seen in the “power lines” that graph the terrain.
Shapes and materials are fused together in my work to create images and sculptural objects with multiple layers of visual and personal meaning. Recognizable forms and media are filtered through time and distilled into simple poetic forms.
These tar paper and house paint images embody and portray time, change, power, and the paradox of the infrastructures that both support and endanger our lives
